Trump’s abandonment of Kurds will change balance of power in Middle East – to America’s ultimate loss

Syrian government, Russia and Iran appear to be main winners, writes Patrick Cockburn

Monday 14 October 2019 23:03 BST
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A US soldier on an armoured vehicle in Syria's Hasakeh province close to the Turkish border
A US soldier on an armoured vehicle in Syria's Hasakeh province close to the Turkish border

It is the endgame of the eight-year-old Syrian war: the Turkish-Kurd confrontation was the most serious crisis still to be resolved, something that is now happening in the cruellest way possible with the extinction of the statelet that the Syrian Kurds had fought to create since 2011.

The Turkish priority, which was to destroy anything even resembling self-determination for the 2-3 million Syrian Kurds, has been achieved. The Kurds have no option but to throw themselves into the embrace of President Bashar al-Assad to protect themselves from a Turkish advance that is likely to mean ethnic cleansing for Kurds and has already created 130,000 displaced people.

What is doubly sad about this is that Rojava, as the Kurds called their mini-state, was the only part of Syria in which the outcome of the 2011 uprising had produced an improved life for many people – particularly if you were a Kurd or a woman. In every other part of Syria, Mr Assad’s government and his opponents seemed to vie with each other in their violence and corruption.

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